1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recognition apparatus for outputting information about a given portion of a subject such as a human face.
2. Background Art
Various kinds of processing for recognizing a given portion of a subject such as a human face from within image data have been conventionally conceived. For example, JP-A-2000-105819 discloses an apparatus that performs an example of processing for detecting a facial portion, the processing consisting of a combination of detection of moving regions and detection of skin color.
However, where detection of a face is performed using portions of skin color, the effects of various factors (e.g., variations in skin color among individuals, variations due to illuminating conditions, and the presence of background regions having colors similar with skin color) must be taken into account. In particular, where variations in skin color among individuals are considered, it is necessary to widen a color range that is regarded as skin color. If this range is widened, the probability that regions of the identical color are erroneously discovered from inside the background increases. In this way, where only a color of the subject such as skin color is utilized, there is the problem that the recognition accuracy cannot be improved with ease.
Furthermore, detection of moving regions is a kind of processing involving heavy load. Where the whole image data is processed in this way, the processing load is increased.